It can be difficult to imagine now, but much of the land between the old city and the harbour was once water, beach or working shoreline. The name Strand Street is a clue: “strand” means beach. In earlier Cape Town, this was close to the edge of Table Bay, with ships anchored offshore and goods, passengers and supplies moving between vessels and the shore.

The Castle of Good Hope, the Grand Parade, Adderley Street, Roggebaai and the Waterfront all form part of this wider story. The Original Shoreline project now traces that old sea edge through the city, connecting places that help explain how Cape Town grew from a small refreshment station into a port city.

In the 1930s and 1940s, land reclamation changed the relationship between city and sea. The Foreshore pushed the coastline outward, and areas once closely connected to the water began to feel inland. De Waterkant still looks towards the harbour, but the sea it once overlooked has moved away.

One of the pleasures of walking through De Waterkant is noticing how much history is hidden in plain sight. Street names such as Waterkant, Dock, Strand, Sea, and Jetty, point back to an older geography, when the sea, the harbour and the daily life of the city were much closer together.

These names can seem almost odd today, surrounded by traffic, shops and apartment buildings. But they remind us that the city centre was not always shaped as it is now, and that the old shoreline still runs quietly through the map.

De Waterkant sits on the lower slopes below Signal Hill, overlooking Table Bay. Its position has always been part of its character: high enough to look towards the harbour, but close enough to the old working city to be shaped by its movement, trade and labour.

The streets climbing the hill developed as a dense, human-scale neighbourhood. Small houses, terraces, steps, lanes and cobbled streets created a distinctive urban fabric, closely connected to neighbouring Bo-Kaap and the wider old city. De Waterkant’s history dates back to the 1700s, and the surrounding Bo-Kaap area includes some of Cape Town’s oldest surviving houses.

Loader Street and Bayview Terrace are part of this story. Their elevated position gave views across Table Bay and the harbour, which helps explain the local traditions that associate some of these homes with maritime life. Those traditions are evocative, but should be read with care: the strongest historical evidence is not that specific captains lived in particular houses, but that the neighbourhood as a whole was deeply shaped by its outlook over the bay.

De Waterkant’s appeal lies partly in its scale. Unlike the larger buildings of the city centre below, much of the neighbourhood is made up of small houses, narrow streets and intimate corners. The architecture reflects Cape and Georgian influences, with later Victorian layers and many changes over time.

The City’s heritage guidance for the adjacent Bo-Kaap area notes the importance of the wider setting at the foot of Signal Hill and overlooking the old Table Bay harbour. It also identifies Cape Dutch, Georgian and Victorian stylistic layers in the surrounding historic fabric.

This is not museum-piece heritage. The neighbourhood has been lived in, altered, restored, painted, adapted and argued over. That is part of its character. The result is a streetscape where heritage is not only found in individual buildings, but in the rhythm of walls, roofs, pavements, steps, lanes, views and everyday use.

De Waterkant’s heritage is not only architectural. It is also social. The neighbourhood formed part of a wider working city shaped by the port, by slavery and emancipation, by Cape Muslim life, by traders and artisans, by dockworkers and sailors, and by the neighbouring communities of Bo-Kaap and District Six.

This wider history matters. De Waterkant should not be seen only as a picturesque pocket of pretty houses and cobbled lanes. Its beauty is real, but it sits alongside deeper stories of work, community, displacement, exclusion, resilience and reinvention. 

The relationship between De Waterkant and Bo-Kaap is especially important. City heritage material notes that Bo-Kaap and Loader Street / De Waterkant once formed one community, before later road changes and apartheid-era racial zoning divided them more sharply.

Like many parts of central Cape Town, De Waterkant was affected by apartheid planning and racial segregation. The extension of Strand Street in the 1930s and the later declaration of Loader Street / De Waterkant as a White Group Area further divided an older shared community.

In the decades that followed, the area’s historic buildings came under pressure, but many were eventually restored. That preservation helped protect much of the neighbourhood’s built character. At the same time, restoration and reinvestment changed the social and economic life of the area. De Waterkant became more fashionable, more commercial and more visitor-facing.

That tension is part of the story too. Heritage is not only about saving old buildings. It is also about remembering who lived here, who was pushed out, who returned, who arrived later, and how a neighbourhood continues to change.